


DIARY

by tickfleato



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Horror, Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24262585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tickfleato/pseuds/tickfleato
Summary: paper scraps and rain. ants and dreams. where's the worm?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	DIARY

IMAGES:

A silver sphere covered in ants. A statue. Silver hands, silver knuckles, silver eyes. Crawling with ants.

A red sun on a white sky. A great, looming, hazy sphere of blank red suspended in a void.

A sky wheeling with stars, astrological symbols, constellations written plainly. The moon and sun are enormous and bear strange faces. This is a periodic event.

A crawlspace.

A face.

A worm.

THOUGHTS:

Where are you? What is that sound? A foghorn, blurred and grey. You are deep, deep under the water. 

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe-

IMAGES:

A locker full of red cord. It extends backwards, seemingly endlessly, just red lines crossing in darkness.

A hand with fingers so thin as to appear wire-like, with the index finger extended and the rest curled.

White veins creeping across concrete, squiggling arterial patterns which bulge and pulse.

A tongue. 

A worm.

THOUGHTS:

Speaking a language that you don't quite know, but feel you understand. Something is behind your eyes, digging. Something is drowning.

Your hands are full of ants. Your mouth is full of ants. What isn't?

There's a worm somewhere.

\-----

Scraps of paper I found under the couch today. Like weird poetry. I can't get some of it out of my head... it's a bit creepy, all the stuff about ants particularly. And worms. We get an ant problem in winter, all of them driven in by the rain and there's nothing in particular you can do about it. After I read this stuff I can't get the thought out of my mind of the ants, going into me when I'm sleeping... of worms... It's probably natural. But it's weird.

\-----

IMAGES:

Gold 3-in-the-afternoon light filtering through ordered trunks of eucalyptus trees, tall and uninvited. White buildings just behind them. There is no undergrowth, only the flat ground with its brown carpet of crescent-shaped leaves. 

A sheep's brain, a radiating fractal pattern inside the cerebellum in white and grey-pink.

A silver brain, ants creeping in and out of the folds.

A eucalyptus tree, the long strips of bark peeled away to show many holes. Inside the holes, a single, long worm.

A face.

THOUGHTS:

What's thinner than a hair, what waves back and forth in front of your eyes? What curls in the back of your throat? What is a riddle?

What is a riddle?

What is a riddle?

There's someone at the door. Answer it.

\-----

I found more paper scraps, and the last line, well... The doorbell rang when I put the paper down, made me jump. When I went to check, sweating, no one was there, but there was a package addressed to me. It wasn't anything mysterious though. Just some books I ordered, which I'd forgotten momentarily in my fear. Just a coincidence. 

Winter's coming up. When it rains the moss on the sidewalk turns bright green, and it's one of my favorite sights... And when it rains the ants come inside. And spiders and the like. Worms, though... they delight in the rain. I delight in the rain.

\-----

IMAGES:

The sun a flat white disk behind clouds.

The sun a flat red disk behind ash.

The sun a flat black disk behind rain.

THOUGHTS:

Go outside, breathe in the ozone and the wet, bitter, dirty smells, breathe in the fresh things and the decaying both. 

Where's the worm?

\-----

The ants are here. I don't usually mind them all that much, as long as they don't get into my food, but I can't stop thinking about the paper scraps. I found more under my bed this time, some water-stained. They're just printer paper with black even text, could've come out of anything really. I don't know where they're coming from, but for some reason I haven't felt like trying to find out. It's like... the opposite of paranoia, maybe. Except at the same time they're putting this budding dread into me, when the ants touch me I'm filled with revulsion. The rain scares me.

When I finish reading them, I always seem to misplace them. It's not unusual for me to put things down without any conscious knowledge, and lose them momentarily, but no matter how hard I look I can't find them. I remember the words, but it's like the papers themselves just vanish. It could very well be my absentmindedness though. There are other paper scraps around the house too, bookmarks and such.

\-----

IMAGES:

A beach, a mirror-covered structure with a lopsided geometric appearance erected in the sand. There are no stars, the sky is black, and the sea too. But somehow, everything is illuminated with dull light.

A spirograph.

An elephant skull, one tusk metallic. 

An ear.

Black fingernails.

THOUGHTS:

You wonder, and you wander, and you breathe, and you drown.

Walk, walk, walk, walk!

IMAGES:

A worm, about as wide as an earthworm, going on as far as the eye can see.

A worm, a clear, white, slimy sheet. Covered in pale yellow and orange veins but with no recognizable pattern or system.

A worm, a black spot in the sky which gets bigger and bigger as it squirms through the air. Sleek, fast, wriggling.

A worm which falls apart.

A worm, silver and covered in holes.

THOUGHTS:

Where's the worm? What's in those holes?

You need to wake up.

\-----

I found these ones under my pillow. I'd dreamt about nothing I can remember in particular, and not specifically the images written here but they tug at my head like they were connected in some way. I'd say it was brought on by the previous stuff but the dreams, they're like the new things specifically. Reading the last line... I don't think it refers to waking up this morning. But I don't know what it refers to. I don't want to 'wake up'. But I do want to know what's in those holes, although I think I can hazard a guess from the themes of the scraps. Probably ants. 

I can smell rainwater, and ozone, and that kind of bitter earthy smell - petrichor. I can smell it all the time although it's stronger with the rain of course. But it's there, even indoors, even on clear dry days. Not enough to bother me really. But it's setting me on edge. I can't find any more ants but there are little holes around the cracks they come out of. Barely enough width for a hair.

\-----

IMAGES:

The ground covered in silver mirrors, the mirrors covered in black handprints.

A luminous sea.

A woodcut of a dragon.

A woodcut of a dragon, being devoured by ants.

A woodcut of a dragon-

\-----

This time the rest of the paper was blurred into unreadable mush by rainwater, and I found it under my plate after breakfast. It wasn't there before I put it down, I'm certain of that. The table and the bottom of the plate are dry, too - only the paper is wet. Where are these coming from? I'd say it can't be my imagination, but the way I always mislay them...

They keep getting closer. Around the house, under the couch, under my pillow, under this plate. I don't know what that means, but I can't imagine it's good. I should be scared. Why am I not scared? Why am I so tired? And why can I smell the rain?

\-----

\-----

It was under my tongue this time. Unreadable. There's a bitter taste that won't go away. A stinging. Like ant bites, formic acid. The smell of rain is overpowering... Something's squirming at the back of my throat.

I saw a worm today. Did you?


End file.
